Library News Blog

The banging and shouting emanating from the lower floor of the Sealy Library this semester are sounds not normally associated with the quietude of a library, yet these are indeed the noises that faculty, students, and Library staff have been living with in the Sealy Library for many weeks this semester. As part of the Haaren Hall upgrade, the Lloyd Sealy Library is also seeing a renovation of its HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) system that will hopefully result in better airflow within a more comfortable range of temperatures.

In addition, as part of a plan dating back more than ten years, a new Special Collections Room is being constructed adjacent to the lower level of the Library, and will have its entrance from the Haaren Hall Atrium. Over the past twelve years the Library’s collections of rare books, manuscript collections, and archival materials have more than tripled in size, resulting in hundreds of linear feet of archival material and rare books being shelved in various locked cages and staff offices. When completed, the new Special Collections and Rare Book Room will not be large enough to accommodate all of our present and future special collections. However, we look forward to a better environment for our most valuable and delicate rare books, manuscripts and archives, and a beautiful state of the art exhibition space and reading room for researchers, as well as a workroom for archivists processing collections.

Unfortunately, neither of these projects can be accomplished without breaking down walls, demolishing old ducts, and cutting new holes. Although all of the noisy work was originally supposed to be completed during hours when the Library is closed, in the end this was not possible and construction has gone on into the early afternoon. Also, the demolishing of the old HVAC unit on the Library’s lower level was not immediately followed by the delivery and construction of a new HVAC unit, and the Library faculty and staff who work in the Library, as well as students studying in the Library, have endured weeks of high temperatures and noisy fans.

There is no firm end date for the work, but we trust that the noise-producing work will be completed by the end of the year, and that the final result will be a more comfortable library and a beautiful Special Collections Room. Then we can all turn our attention to the expansion of the Library Computer Lab area, tentatively scheduled for next summer…

For as long as any of us can remember, we have maintained a two-tiered system for reserve books in the Library. Faculty could bring library-owned books to the Reserve Desk and request that they be placed on reserve for the semester. They could also bring in personal copies for placement on reserve for students in their class. The former were discoverable via the CUNY+ catalog or OneSearch, labeled as John Jay Reserve in the availability column of the results page and would be requested via Library of Congress call number at the Reserve Desk. The personal copies proved to be more complicated. To find the call number – which in these cases was usually the faculty last name – students and librarians would need to search in the Reserves section of the CUNY+ catalog or OneSearch. This practice, while familiar and somewhat manageable, can be confusing for all involved. Many students do not know whether a book on reserve is a Library or faculty copy, which often involves frustration and delay in accessing the books they need. Often, the same title would wind up in multiple places in the catalog, further confusing both students and staff. Not only that, but in the majority of cases, faculty members did not retrieve their books at the end of semesters, leaving the Reserve Room to become storage for unclaimed books.

To ameliorate this, beginning in the Spring 2016 semester, we will continue to accept personal copies from faculty for reserve, but they will by default be considered library donations. This allows the Library staff to catalog them with Library of Congress call numbers and, more importantly, will make the searching on the part of librarians and students far simpler. In certain circumstances, at the request of a faculty member, we can continue to place books using the last-name-as-call-number system, but this would be for cases such as a customized three-ring binder or other non-book items that require special consideration. If faculty do wish to retrieve their books at the end of the semester, they may still do so, and we will deaccession them. This way, faculty will be helping to grow the Library’s collections with their generous donations while making the lives of their students much easier. For any questions about this new protocol, please contact Kathleen Collins.

In the last edition of the Library newsletter, we reported on how many students were taking advantage of the 24/7 Library lab hours during the final examination period (see “Library as space: Just being OPEN is still one of the best things the library has to offer,” Spring 2015). Despite the exponential increase in the amount of library content that is accessible electronically from anywhere one can access the Internet, a significant number of John Jay students continue to use the physical library both during regular hours, and as we learned, during extended hours.

Although the numbers alone were significant, we wanted to know more about these dedicated students. Were they writing research papers or studying for final exams? What resources were they accessing? Could a correlation between these after-hour library users and academic success, retention rates and other strategic goals be made? In the Spring of 2015 we tried to find the answers to some of these questions by surveying the students using the library during these extended hours.

Total student hours. Before getting into some of the specifics, the first thing to note is that more students took advantage of these extended hours each successive semester they were made available. As shown in the chart below, in the inaugural semester, Spring 2014, a total of at least 3,342 student hours (the total number of students in the Library lab during each hour of the extended hours) were logged, then in Fall 2014 that number increased to 4,655 (39% increase), and in the Spring 2015 the number increased again to 5,639 hours (21% increase).

Peak day of usage. Extended Library lab hours were offered the week before and the week of final exams. In Spring 2014 the peak day of use was the Sunday night before exam week began and, except for a slight increase on Tuesday and Wednesday of exam week, the numbers continued to decline from this Sunday peak. In the Fall 2014 period, the peak day of use was again the Sunday evening before exam week but usage peaked almost as high on Thursday of exam week, with higher comparative use throughout the intervening period. This same pattern continued in Spring 2015 but with higher overall usage and with the second highest day of usage occurring on the Tuesday evening of exam week. Not only were more students taking advantage of these extended hours but they were doing so more regularly.

Peak hour of usage. In all semesters the largest number of students could be found in the Library between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. These numbers declined throughout the evening and began to rise again between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. as students returned to the Library. It appears that students arrived (or remained in the Library lab once the extended library hours began, typically at 10 p.m.) and then left at different hours during the night as they completed their work. This is supported by the survey data, summarized in the chart on the previous page, showing how long respondents had planned to spend in the Library on a given night. Only about 4% of the surveyed respondents planned to spend one or two hours in the Library lab on a particular evening while about 45% were planning to be there for three to six hours and the largest percentage, about 50%, planned on staying seven or more hours, essentially making a night of it.

Who were these students? A typical user of the extended Library lab hours was a full-time undergraduate in her first or second year of college and of traditional college age. Perhaps she was looking for a college experience (an all-nighter of studying with or without friends) or in need of a place with a computer and Internet access to complete her work for the semester, or some combination of the above.

Our data showed that the overwhelming majority (80%) of surveyed respondents were full-time undergraduate students and lived with their parents (64%). The next largest group were part-time undergraduates (9%), with both full and part-time graduate students participating at the lowest rate (4% and 3%, respectively). The majority of respondents (82%) had been at John Jay for four years or less. Most were in their second year (28%) followed by first year students (20%).

Consistent with the above data, most students were 22 years of age or younger with the percentages spread fairly evenly across the age of 22 (12%), 21 (13%), 20 (11%) and 19 (10%). About 11% of the visitors were between 30 and 62 years of age, suggesting that having 24/7 access to the Library also serves the needs of non-traditional students.

Looking at these users from a major or area of concentration perspective, a healthy mix of 22 different majors were represented. The top five were Criminal Justice majors (15%), followed by International Criminal Justice (13%), Forensic Psychology (10%), Forensic Science (7%) and Criminology (7%).

Why were they there? Students reported they were using the Library during these extended hours for a variety of reasons but the top reason was to write a research paper, followed by individual study or research using the computers. Because the entire Library was not open, only the Library lab which provides about 50 computers and a cordoned off section of the Niederhoffer Lounge, it is not a surprise that many students were using the Library computers to write research papers. Given the number of students who reported they were at the Library to study, this suggests that if more study space were made available (in addition to the Niederhoffer Lounge), even more students would take advantage of these extended library hours.

Were they looking for computers, Internet access, and/or space? To better measure the importance of the Library in providing access to study space and computers for writing and research, we asked respondents where they typically do their research and writing. Most respondents reported some combination of the Library and home, with the Library identified as the place used most often. A small percentage reported that they did their research and writing at other places including WiFi hotspots in coffee shops or their workplace.

To understand the importance of providing students with the hardware they need to do their work, respondents were asked where and on what device they typically access the Internet for academic work. A similar pattern emerged. As shown in the chart on the previous page, most accessed the Internet from Library computers, followed by personal computers/laptops in their homes and then various WiFi hotspots. Library computers and then personal computers/laptops were the devices most often used for academic work. Tablets and smartphones tied for the third most used device but when added together were as much used for academic work as were Library or personal computers.

Who benefited? Happily, the students who reaped the benefits of these extended Library hours were not just the usual suspects. The largest number reported having a 3.0 GPA, but these extended lab hours served the full spectrum of academic performers demonstrating how the Library supports the success of all our students.

We asked the students how we could improve this program if extended Library lab hours were offered in the future. In addition to multiple requests to allow food and coffee in the Library and to open more of the Library space – and perhaps a comfortable place to rest – the most frequent sentiment was captured by one student who said, “It is an amazing opportunity; just keep it going as it is.”

Over the past summer, using funds approved by the Student Technology Fee Committee, the Library converted the two group study rooms on the upper level of the Library, at the rear of the reference area, into collaborative study spaces.

These glass-enclosed rooms now each house a cherry-veneered table with electrical outlets and built-in connections to a 50-inch Panasonic display panel. Students working in groups can connect their laptops, tablets, or smartphones to the color-coded HDMI cables. The push of a color-coded button will switch the display to the appropriate device. Students without an HDMI port can borrow the appropriate dongles at the Reference Desk to connect their devices. Our students, whom surveys have shown to be among the most tech-savvy in the University, have had no problems learning to use this plug-and-play system.

Demand for the rooms has increased as the semester has progressed and students have been observed working on PowerPoint presentations, streaming videos, conducting online research, and generally—well—collaborating. The rooms are limited for use by two or more students and must be unlocked by a reference librarian upon presentation of a John Jay ID card.

The Lloyd Sealy Library has been offering ebooks since 2001. Our collection of electronic books is very impressive and consists of thousands of titles. Today, everybody would expect ebooks to cause no problems either for librarians or library patrons for a simple reason – they are electronic! There should be no difficulty in accessing and downloading them. Take academic journal articles, for example. After the full-text availability option is established, they are easy to manipulate – print out or download forever on a personal computer. But when it comes to electronic books the access process is not so seamless. Few things have changed in the 15 years since reference librarians first started hearing complaints about the NetLibrary ebooks collections. An ebook would be inaccessible for reading online until 30 minutes after another person finished looking at it on his computer. Simultaneous access would be limited to three people at a time, and when someone wanted to download a whole book, everyone else would have to endure a long wait to get to the book. This nightmare of limited user access is still going on, and there is still no cure offered by the publishers and vendors. Publishers’ search for maximum profit is at odds with libraries’ desire for ease of access, making solutions elusive.

An ebook in a university library environment is just a book. If a print library book is checked out it leaves its place on the shelf and is enjoyed only by one lucky reader for a certain period of time. The same applies to the ebooks – if someone downloads an ebook, it becomes unavailable for everybody else; in other words, the title is checked out virtually and will become accessible only when the ebook is returned (that is, checked in).

Most of the electronic books in the Library’s collection come from two vendors – EBSCOhost and ebrary. When we acquire an ebook, we always look for an unlimited access mode whenever possible, but the publisher’s restrictions or an exorbitant price might prohibit us from doing so.

The rule of thumb is that ebooks bought exclusively by our library (those that indicate John Jay College ownership in the catalog) will have a restricted access in most of the cases – from one to four simultaneous users. Ebooks from EBSCOhost are only available to the John Jay College community. Ebooks from ebrary can be either exclusively used by John Jay’s patrons or belong to a larger, CUNY-wide collection. CUNY-wide ebrary titles will be labeled as CUNY in the catalog. These books have practically no restrictions on the number of users reading and downloading them. As for the John Jay-owned books on the ebrary platform, their access might also be restricted to one to four readers at a time, with a small number having unrestricted access.

Sounds nightmarish, but it is what it is. Believe it or not, things are getting better in the world of ebooks. Both ebrary and EBSCOhost provide user access restriction information in terms of download and printing ability on the title level in the database. Please read these records carefully (it took librarians only a decade to persuade the publishers to make this information available to the end user).

Faculty who would like to assign ebooks from our collection as class readings should first investigate the mode of access (one, several, or an unlimited number of simultaneous users) by either looking at the detailed ebook record in a particular database or by asking librarians for help.

The Library’s online catalog records are managed centrally at the university level and cannot always reflect all the information the librarians would like to display about ebooks. We are working through different university-wide committees to make the ebook records in the catalog more descriptive.

The ebooks universe is still being developed. Librarians always advocate for better ebook access on behalf of students and faculty when meeting with vendors.

Listed below is a selection of ebooks acquired in the last six months for a significant price from ebrary and EBSCOhost. After each title, there is a note about simultaneous usage (see “Ebooks: A joy or a nightmare?”).

[Note: Links in this blog post will take you to the book records in OneSearch. If the record reads "Full text may be available," find the "EBSCOhost Access for John Jay users" link on the right side of the page.]

Highlights:

The author, Professor Jana Arsovska of John Jay’s Sociology Department, “examines some of the most widespread myths about the so-called Albanian Mafia…[and] presents a comprehensive overview of the causes, codes of conduct, activities, migration, and structure of Albanian organized crime groups in the Balkans, Western Europe, and the United States.” — Publisher's description

“The author offers detailed accounts of how killers travel a path that leads from childhood innocence to lethal violence in adolescence or adulthood. He places the emotional and moral damage of each individual killer within a larger scientific framework of social, psychological, anthropological, and biological research on human development.” — Publisher’s description

This book consists of “a panoramic survey of 1940s culture that analyzes popular novels, daytime radio serials, magazines and magazine fiction, marital textbooks, Hollywood and educational films, jungle comics, and popular music.” —Publisher’s description

Finding ebooks: When searching the CUNY+ Catalog (the Books tab on the Library home page), you will often see the description “electronic resource” in the format column. This most often means it is an ebook. To access it, click on the title or the college name in the availability column and then look for the URL field for a link to the book. You can also use OneSearch. If a title shows “full text available,” you can click on the “view online link” to access the book.

The Library’s Special Collections collects Rare Books and Manuscript Collections on criminal justice, broadly defined. We are pleased to announce the following recent acquisitions.

Manuscript Collections recently acquired

The records of the Fortune Society

Approximately 65 boxes of records of the Fortune Society were donated to the Library over this past summer. We are processing the collection now and are happy to report a nearly full run of Fortune News as well as historical correspondence, reports, meeting minutes, publications, and photographs from many of the agency’s offices, programs, and events. Stay tuned for an event and exhibition celebrating the donation of these records. We are now working on processing and describing this collection.

This summer we were given three boxes of files collected by Whitman Knapp as director of the The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption (1970-72) and the City’s Anti-Corruption Procedures, popularly known as the Knapp Commission. We are particularly gratified to find that this collection fills in gaps in our already extensive Knapp Commission Records Collection. We thank Mrs. Ann Knapp for donating these papers to us. A finding aid (PDF) to this collection is available.

From the Broadsides Collection, Lloyd Sealy Library Special Collections.

NYPD – Service and pay cards

This fall we were contacted by the archivist of the New York Transit Museum, looking for a home for ten boxes of NYPD pay cards rescued from their previous location on Jay Street in Brooklyn. As you can see from the sample below, these are pretty mundane items recording pay, service, and retirement records of a sample of officers of presently unknown geographic and chronological scope. However, this collection has potentially great value to genealogy researchers with family members who served in the NYPD. We already have two families eagerly awaiting news about whether their relatives’ cards are in this collection. We will be processing this collection very soon.

This fall we acquired a set of three early 20th century “Wanted Posters” distributed by the Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, PA. Printed on these 5 x 7 inch sheets of paper are the photographs, prisoner numbers, sentencing details, and physical descriptions (including Bertillon Measurements) of three black parolees named James F. Smith, Samuel Macey, and William H. Wells who all violated parole in 1915. In all three cases, the date of their parole violation is the same as the date of their parole.

A selection from our recently acquired Rare Books

The below selection of new rare books gives a good indication of the range of subjects in which we collect. The first two books are European law books still with their original vellum covers.

1835, New York. Barnard, George G. A full report of the highly interesting breach of promise case: George G. Barnard vs. John J. Gaul and Mary H., his wife, tried before Ogden Edwards, Esquire, one of the circuit judges of the Supreme Court, at the City Hall of New York on the 8th, 9th and 10th days of July, 1835 : containing the whole of the correspondence between the plaintiff and Mrs. Gaul, together with the charge of the judge, and the eloquent speeches of the counsel on both sides. New York: Office of the New-York transcript.

1865, London. Saunders, Thomas William. The Prison Act 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. c. 126): Together with an analysis of the Act and the other statutes and sections of statutes relating to prisons still in force. London: H. Cox.

1883, New York. Gray, Landon Carter, M. D. The case of Maggie Keppel, the Brooklyn child-abductor. New York: Reprinted from the American Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1883. [Image on the right scanned from Lloyd Sealy Library's copy.]

1924, New York. Hardie, James. The history of the tread-mill: containing an account of its origin, construction, operation, effects as it respects the health and morals of the convicts, with their treatment and diet; also, a general view of the penitentiary system, with alterations necessary to be introduced into our criminal code, for its improvement. New York: Printed by S. Marks. [Image on the right: Frontispiece detail from copy owned by U.S. National Library of Medicine.]

1934, London. Great Britain. Commission of Inquiry into the Administration of Justice in Kenya, Uganda and the Tanganyika Territory in Criminal Matters. Report of the Commission of inquiry into the administration of Justice in Kenya, Uganda and the Tanganyika Territory in criminal matters, May, 1933 and Correspondence arising out of the report ... London: H.M. Stationery Office.

In October, METRO Library Council announced that the Library is one of six winners of the 2015-2016 METRO Digitization Grants. Our project, “Digitizing Policing: Opening Access to Law Enforcement Resources,” will make our deep and extensive historical resources on law enforcement and policing available to a wider audience of researchers, students, and law enforcement professionals. The main purpose of this project is to digitize the periodical Law Enforcement News (LEN), and we will be shipping all 636 issues to the Internet Archive for digitization. Over the next year we will also be undertaking other library digitization efforts: rare monographs, serials, pamphlets, and unique archival objects related to the NYPD and other U.S. Police Departments. There are already hundreds of NYPD and law enforcement related digital items in our Digital Collections and on the John Jay College page of the Internet Archive.

Law Enforcement News was continuously published by John Jay College of Criminal Justice from September 1975 through September 2005. In its 30 years of publication, 636 issues were produced. LEN documented developments in police research, policy, and procedure during the last quarter of the 20th century, from which the roots of the current policing environment were shaped. Each issue presented articles that focused on police policy, practice, research, and innovation nationwide. It promoted the sharing of information among law enforcement agencies and the research community. It provided its readers with news, features, and interviews with police chiefs and policy makers. Although the paper published opinion pieces from readers, it did not publish editorials of its own, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. It did not report on crime per se, but it did report on police response to crime. For example, it covered community policing, “broken windows,” and CompStat in their infancies and continued to report on these trends as they made their way throughout the nation.

In the intervening years, the Library has regularly and frequently been contacted by police officers and researchers asking for copies of articles. The Library-hosted LEN web page offers only very limited excerpts and selections. Even so, this web page received 4,500+ hits so far in 2015, indicating that people are still looking for LEN articles. Since 1981, LEN has been indexed by Criminal Justice Periodical Index (ProQuest). Most articles remain inaccessible to the original user base – law enforcement professionals – who are traditionally without access to library resources. We have also heard from libraries supporting new criminal justice programs who would like to include LEN in their collections, but they are neither interested nor financially able to purchase the title in its only available format, microfilm.

Contemporary policing methods and philosophies are (rightly) coming under greater public scrutiny. The intended audiences and end users of these materials include academic researchers studying the policing history of the United States, journalists, students, law enforcement professionals, and interested members of the general public. We cannot accurately foresee how people will use these materials, but we have no doubt that if we build it, they will come. We look forward to providing this material to a wider audience by making it fully open access for all.

We thank Marie Simonetti Rosen, Publisher of LEN, for her assistance on the grant application and for her continuing support of this project.

The Library was happy to host two of Lloyd Sealy’s great-grandchildren, Rochelle, 17, and Aaron (AJ), 15, when they toured the Library this summer. It was the high school students’ first trip to New York City from their home in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. During their visit, they were introduced to news of their great-grandfather, shared stories not previously documented, and reviewed photos from Lloyd Sealy’s life, some of which also hang on walls at home. Rochelle and AJ said their Sealy Library visit was the best part of their trip East.

Ellen Belcher presented “Breaking the String: Losing Beads in Tight Places” at the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group Annual Conference at New York University in May. This paper featured an ongoing contemporary archaeology research project she has undertaken called “Lost Ornaments of New York,” which can be viewed on the web at lostornaments.tumblr.com.

Marta Bladek’s article, “Mapping Grief and Memory in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking,” was published in Biography (37.4). She also reviewed Elena Gorokhova’s Russian Tattoo and Christina Nichol’s Waiting for Electricity (“Staying Home or Leaving It,” Women’s Review of Books, 32.4) and Seth Bruggeman’s Born in the U.S.A. in South Atlantic Review (78.3/4). In addition to her scholarly productivity, Prof. Bladek has contributed a new person to the world: Baby Conrad was born on September 27.

Kathleen Collins published “Food TV” in The Sage Encyclopedia of Food Issues (2015), a review of Su Holmes’ The BBC and Popular Television Culture in the 1950s in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (92.2) and presented “Lending Our Ears: The Evolution of Vicarious Therapy from Radio to Podcasting” at the Northeast Popular Culture Association Conference at Colby-Sawyer College in October.

Jeffrey Kroessler presented on the panel, “A People’s History of Resiliency,” at the Future of Affordable Homeownership in NYC, a conference sponsored by the Center for NYC Neighborhoods. He was also on the panel, “Preserving our Architectural History: The Business Case for Landmarks Preservation,” sponsored by the Landmarks50 Alliance.

Finally, we are happy to welcome Daisy Dominguez, Stefka Tzanova, and Zuwang Shen as adjunct librarians this semester.